To see the gallery from the trip go here
The idea behind the trip was to see if Portland, Oregon was a nice place to live. Though the landscape was beautiful and the people were very friendly, the climate and the "City Urchins" (what the locals call them) were a bit much for us.
The only thing I'd done to check out Portland prior to the trip was rainfall from an official source. Most of it was all asking people, posting on Ask Metafilter and talking to people who'd visited, lived there, or knew someone who lived there. I've gotten used to people making things *sound* worse than they are and assuming it's not as bad as they say. So I took the reports of tons of rain and gray days as exaggerations.
Portland Factoid: 151 days of rain, 214 days of threatens to rain and the possibility of 64 days of sunshine. One person's comment was this: "If you can't see Mt. Hood (nearest mountain) it's raining, if you can see it, it's going to rain." See below picture as reference.
Though Portland wasn't what we were hoping for we had a lot of fun on the trip. I'd have to say that the Badlands in South Dakota was my favorite stop of the trip. We camped a couple nights out there and I don't remember the last time I saw that many stars. We also went to see Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse is HUGE! Mt. Rushmore will fit in the ear and hair of the Crazy Horse Sculpture. But it will take another 50 years to finish it.
{We’re in South Dakota. I like it here.}
Portland
Oh, where to begin. We left Portland on Friday, April 25. I don’t think we’ll go back there unless it’s summer and we’re on vacation. Don’t get me wrong… Portland is absolutely beautiful. When it’s sunny.
But it’s only sunny in the summer, for the most part.
Everyone kept telling us it was a very strange Spring this year - that it should be in the 60s and 70s and sunny much more, but ya know what? I don’t believe them.
Not that they’re lying or anything… It’s just that… well - I think they are so used to the rain that even a faint glimmer of sunshine fighting through the overcast clouds, just enough to paint faint shadows on the ground… I think they call that sunshine. Just because it’s so much better than the gloomy, doomy grey uber-rain doesn’t mean it’s sunny.
It’s gorgeous, but the sogginess is a bit too much.
The people are nice.
The pseudo-club-kid-camper-deadhead-street-thug-beggar-dreadlocks-cuz-i-choose-to-remain-in-my-current-state-whitebread-generation-who-cares crapheads are annoying as fuck.
Yah. I just made this blog R-rated with that one word, eh.
There was a couple we met on the train back to the hotel after our slightly less soggy last day in the city proper (Lots of walking, lunch in the Mall (!), OMSI - Oregon Museum of Science and Industry at 1/2 price, Dozen at VooDoo Doughnut - “The Magic is in the Hole”). They were just leaving after a 6 day visit in Portland. I guess they were either lucky or really oblivious because they didn’t seem to mind the driving rain or the street urchins. And they were actually planning on moving to Portland from Florida. Wow.
I would say more about them, but I don’t think it’s worth my time.
And it seems that, probably partially due to the fact that I’ve been up since four in the morning and I haven’t had enough coffee yet, I’m getting grumpy and gloomy about my post about Portland.
Funny! I’m kind of grey about it…
On that note, I’ll stop, post this, have more coffee, and maybe I can talk about the rest of the trip later. 
~michelle
GEO: Home - (see first post)
Time: 4:41 am EST
This is just a short one before I goto bed.. Later I’ll explain why I didn’t post nearly as much as I thought I would and attempt to fill in some of the blanks that got left out or skipped altogether.